TOLEDO, Ohio — Lucas County Children Services and families of elementary students in the Toledo Public Schools district are getting some help this holiday season.
Two $40,000 donations from the Laborers Local 500 and their partners at Associated General Contractors will help provide Thanksgiving meals for families at Pickett Academy, Robinson Elementary and Achievement Schools, as well as toys for foster children.
“We figured, what better way to promote laborers and contractors that give back to the community?” said David Fleetwood with the Local 500.
Case workers at Lucas County Children Services have been told to go back to their kids and tell them they can have anything they want for Christmas.
“We normally tell our case workers to ask for modest expectations in terms of gifts, and this year we can pretty much tell them the sky's the limit! And that's just such an amazing thing to do,” said Julie Malkin with LCCS.
Lucas County Children Services has seen ups and downs in its caseload this year. Right now, their caseload numbers are back where they were before the pandemic, but during remote learning in the spring their numbers were down.
“When the children were sent home from school, not to be seen by teachers and other mandated reporters, we found that our calls went down. But as soon as school started back up, the calls started coming in,” said Malkin.
Malkin says this donation will help many local children have a normal Christmas
TPS principals agreed, adding their families are often in need of food, and knowing they will have a normal Thanksgiving means a lot.
“Our families are probably the most affected by the pandemic and a shortage of food. So this is just very important that I know as an administrator that our families will be serviced,” said Principal Dr. M James Jones from Robinson Elementary and Robinson Achievement.
Those who are planning to pick up these Thanksgiving goods can drop by Pickett Academy from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and Robinson from 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.